Sunday, May 31, 2015

A heavy set black man was tased by the police this morning.
He died as a result.
The incident occurred in southwest Rochester. Within 30 hours, there were already two shootings and two stabbings in that part of the city.
They hardly got any notice from anyone.
But then, it was black on black violence.
This is different, because it involved a black man dying at the hands of the police.
According to Rochester's liberal newsrag, the Democrat and Chronicle:
"Police responded to Tremont Street in southwest Rochester at about 9 a.m. Sunday upon receiving reports that the man, driving a red pickup truck, had crashed into another vehicle and Calvary Spiritual Church, at the corner of Tremont and Morgan streets, then fled on foot.
After police and firefighters arrived, the man returned and, disobeying police orders, got back in his truck. He proceeded to crash into a street sign, a fence and a house, where he knocked over a gas meter," Police Chief Ciminelli said.
"He then locked himself in the cab as officers shouted for him to come out with his hands up.
Instead, according to police and a witness, he waited about five minutes, then came out charging at the police officers, with fists clenched. One of the officers on the scene then Tased him."
"The man received medical attention at the scene from certified emergency medical technicians and was then taken by ambulance to Strong Memorial Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Ciminelli said. An autopsy is being conducted."
An investigation into the incident is now being undertaken.
Apparently, a witness claims that he had seen the dead man driving wildly up and down the street for days. Nobody bothered to report him at that time, which says a lot.
We should expect to be treated to the spectacle of the black community staging some protests, marches and shouting "Black lives matter."
There will probably be some not so subtle threats about Ferguson and Baltimore.
This has now become standard operating procedure when a black person dies at the hands of a white police officer.
The identity of the officer who did the tasing is as yet unknown, but wouldn't it be a hoot if the officer were black?

At least in certain Rochester's neighborhoods.
That is the norm here.
Yesterday was hot and humid.
A bar brawl on Rochester's southwest side ended with two people shot and one slashed.
Those injuries were not considered life threatening.
A mile away, sixteen hours later, a man was stabbed badly enough to be listed in serious condition at the hospital.
These incidents could just as easily have occurred on Rochester's northeast side, which is also violence-ridden.
Life in those neighborhoods is considered cheap. So cheap that I haven't heard about any marches being planned to protest these violent incidents.
They occur with such regularity that they merit only a brief mention in the local news media.
I am sure that plenty of ministers who cater to the residents of those neighborhoods will have something to say about it this morning in their sermons.
And there it will stay, because most crime victims in those neighborhoods know their assailants and won't snitch on them. At the same time, they will claim that the police aren't doing enough for them because of racism.
It's a worn out old tune.
This sort of behavior is bad for Rochester's reputation. It's hard to find investors to help develop neighborhoods where the lack of safety is a definite issue.
On the other hand, it occurs mostly in certain neighborhoods. It will affect only the people who either live there or find it necessary to be there.
The rest of us who don't live there are safer, regardless of the weather.
There's some kind of cold comfort in that.

Friday, May 22, 2015

The City of Canandaigua is moving full speed ahead to develop the northern shore of Canandaigua Lake.
The people of Canandaigua appear to be happy about this. It will make use of previously unusable land and add to their small city charm.
It was formerly a brownfield.
This means that it needed a massive cleanup before any sort of development could occur.
The development will consist of mixed use buildings, retail and residences.
The people of Canandaigua see this development as a way to draw more people, both residents and tourists, to their charming city.
Then there's the urban village of Charlotte in Rochester.
Canandaigua and Charlotte seem similar in location and weather. Both are on lakes; both have the same winter weather; both have long histories.
But the Charlatans are uninterested in similar development plans proposed by City Hall.
They met at the Robach Center last night to complain about it. Again.
Only the numbers that Charlotte Strong's rabble rousers can muster to complain about the proposed development have dwindled.
The Charlatans don't want "development." They don't want "change." They don't want "tourists."
At least not the "wrong" kind of tourists. Especially on holiday weekends.
A "tourist" in Charlotte is anyone who doesn't live there, even if you live in another part of the City of Rochester.
The mayor would be better advised if they scrapped their plans for development in Charlotte entirely and concentrate on developing "Canal Town" downtown. Plenty of people have been asking about that for years.
City Hall could use Canandaigua as their example.
Charlotte can be left exactly as it is.

Tuesday, May 19, 2015

The Charlatans are at it again.
They will be meeting at the Robach Center in Charlotte on Thursday, May 21, to complain about City Hall's plans to develop Charlotte's waterfront.
Their biggest complaints are about a high rise hotel. And median market value housing.
Charlatans have confused that with subsidized housing.
The truth is that they don't want an influx of black coloreds living in their pristine urban village.
Hell, they don't even like black folk taking the bus to come up to Charlotte to use the beach in the summertime. They have previously suggested ending the busline further down Lake Avenue to make such an undertaking more difficult. This suggestion becomes even more popular after fights break out on the beach during the summer.
For the last seven or eight years, computer generated graphics of the development plan featured high-rise buildings on Lake Avenue at the beach.
It was only when a black woman was elected mayor and sought to implement those plans did all Hell break loose.
Charlatans are insulated, isolated and inbred. They talk a good show about Charlotte's glorious past, forgetting that if it hadn't been for Rochester, upstream on the Genesee River, Charlotte would be nothing.
Even in its heyday, Charlotte was never one of the Great Lakes busiest ports.
While the Charlatans claim that they want development in their urban village, they have never developed any plans of their own. That's because they really don't want anything to change. All they can do is bitch about the city's plans. And draw attention to themselves again.
Like they will do on Thursday night.
The rest of the city has gotten bored with Charlotte. Rochester's troubled neighborhoods have stopped caring about the laughable antics of Charlotte Strong and are not sympathetic to their complaints.
Most feel the time, effort and money could be better spent elsewhere.
The mayor should abandon the current plans for waterfront development in Charlotte and focus on parts of the city that would welcome such attention.

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

There is much talk about eliminating poverty in Rochester.
This is a sham.
Creating new committees to talk about the problem will do nothing, because they are tactfully ignoring the root causes of poverty, at least in Rochester.
The war on poverty has been going on for fifty years, since the Johnson Administration.
It produced affirmative action, political correctness and a lowering of standards to encourage social engineering.
It failed, at a cost of untold billions of dollars to taxpayers.
Bleeding heart liberal politicians still want the taxpayers to shell out even more.
The people most intimately affected are worse off now than they were when the war on poverty began.
Poverty is heavily concentrated in certain sections of Rochester. This is primarily where the black community lives: the ghetto.
There is no nice way of referring to it, although nobody likes to call it that.
It is also in the ghetto where most of the violence in Rochester takes place.
And where most of our murders occur.
Because that's where a sub-culture exists that has no respect for authority or personal responsibility and tolerates crime, violence and murder.
It starts with the family.
The families there consist largely of unwed teen mothers, absentee male authority figures, individuals with histories of crime as long as your arm and a heavy dependence on the Department of Social Services to provide basic subsistence.
That comes courtesy of you and me.
The same is true of the basic education offered by our public schools. Most of them don't want it or need it, since they believe it won't help them get anywhere. They see their fate as predestined or part of the natural order of things. School won't teach them to become better criminals or street savvy drug dealers.
So they don't go to school.
Most of those who do graduate are unprepared for anything approaching higher education because the standards have been lowered so that they would graduate. They can't read or write at a twelfth grade level, but have a diploma.
The diploma has become a sham, in the name of social engineering.
In return, society is told that they do not have to follow its rules, that they are entitled to succor after three hundred years of slavery in this country, and that they will resort to violence when the mood strikes if they are thwarted.
Racism has become their crutch. And more people are getting sick and tired of hearing those rants.
Their only loyalty is to their dysfunctional families. Crime and violence are okay, as long as it is conducted against non-family members. And being loyal to criminal family members is considered honorable. Don't snitch.
This is why Mayor Warren's "Operation Transformation" will fail, as will Assemblyman Joe Morelle's poverty initiative. It overlooks the need for personal responsibility for one's actions. Which is not the primary feature of the sub-culture in the ghettoes. It's everyone else's fault.
Mayor Warren's administration is minister-ridden. She depended heavily upon them to preach politics from the pulpit during her election campaign. In repayment, they wish to bask in the glow of celebrity. These same ministers have had no effect on stemming the birth of illegitimate children born to teen agers, which helps perpetuate poverty. Their sermons haven't stopped open air drug markets, or people from settling private scores by shooting or stabbing. Young criminals scoff at the ministers until they are incarcerated, then they demand their support to get out, usually citing racism as the reason they were jailed.
The crimes they committed had nothing to do with their being prosecuted and convicted, in their twisted minds.
The ministers, of course, are responding to the call to action, seeking publicity.
And they will fail.
Clergy on patrol is concentrating its efforts on members of a sub-culture that have already rejected anything approaching Christian morality.
The ghetto hepcats see such morality as "boogee," their way of pronouncing "bourgeois," and not something to imitate.
Their condition is not in god's hands, anyway, but in their own.
And society owes them nothing.
Mayor Warren: you really want to transform Rochester? Tell the girls to keep their legs together, stop making babies that will be supported by the taxpayer, go to school, graduate and stop hanging around bums. Tell the boys to stop making babies, go to school, graduate and stop letting your homeboys drag you into selling drugs. Become contributing members of society, not burdens who feel entitled to the fruits of others' hard work. To all the fine, young criminals: tell them when they break the law, they will go to jail and society will wash its hands of them.
And nobody but their nearest and dearest will mourn them when they fail.
That's the truth of the matter.
And nobody, not even those fine, Bible-thumping ministers, has the guts to tell the truth about it.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

If anybody.
The pool of Democratic candidates for D.A. is small.
New MCDC chairman Dave Garretson was banking on former D.A. Mike Green running against Sandra Doorley.
That isn't going to happen.
Green said "no," leaving Garretson with egg on his face.
There's no news if Garretson has found any Democrat ( on paper, at least ) to run.
But then Garretson has never been successful in any campaigns he has run for himself or others.
Except for the office of chairman of the MCDC, which has proven to be a crown of thorns.
And he is totally unsuited for the office.
But he has a nice smile.
He'll need it if Doorley wins an uncontested race.

Monday, May 4, 2015

Republicans can stop snickering about Shelly Silver.
Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos surrendered to authorities Monday morning and is facing conspiracy, extortion and bribery charges.
Among other things, Skelos went to use his official office to enrich his son with payments from a real-estate developer and an associated environmental company.
According to Rochester's liberal newsrag, the D&C, Skelos' son Adam, who was being paid by a company specializing in stormwater treatment, raised concerns that Cuomo's budget proposal didn't earmark any of the funds for Long Island or for water infrastructure costs.
This is business as usual in Albany, except that this conversation was wiretapped.
So Skelos altered Rochester-area Sen. Rich Funke's response to the State of the State address to include a push for water infrastructure spending.
Funke complied without knowing what he was doing and without knowing Skelos' real interest in water infrastructure.
As a newbie in Albany, Funke probably felt flattered.
Until now.
"Sucker" has been tattooed on his forehead.
The bottom line is that these shenanigans go on often enough without being detected in Albany.
And that both Republicans and Democrats willingly participate in them.
It doesn't matter who gets elected to state office. Albany is a cesspool of corruption and its stench envelops even the most innocent bystanders within a very short period of time.
Which is why state government cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled and rebuilt.
But neither side is willing to undertake such reconstruction because both parties are corrupt.
Funke got caught up in this ongoing drama sooner than anyone expected.
This time he was an innocent dupe, and nobody is accusing him of wrongdoing.
Yet.
Let's see how long his innocence lasts. before he becomes as corrupt as the rest of them.
Funke has stellar examples from both parties to use as role models.

Saturday, May 2, 2015

The recent events in Baltimore have been tragic.
What is worse has been the black community's response to the murder of Freddie Gray when in police custody.
Rioting and looting in that city against people who weren't involved in the murder of a black man at the hands of the police merely hardened opinion against the black community.
Except for the mother who dragged her looting son's ass out of the riot in front of the cameras.
She became a hero, merely because most parents wouldn't do such a thing.
Liberal politicians have produced laws that make disciplining children akin to child abuse.
When people run amok, those same lawmakers claim that the lack of parental discipline is responsible.
Yesterday, in Rochester, there was a protest against the events in Baltimore.
Stocked with members of the black community and their bleeding heart white allies who will endorse any sort of protest, as long as it's for a liberal cause, the message was that black lives matter.
Indeed, they do.
And it was the same after Ferguson, Missouri.
Yet there have been no similar rallies protesting the high amount of black on black violence here.
The recent shootings and stabbings resulting in a few homicides have produced no outrage in the black community.
At least not enough for the black community to take to the streets over it.
People might want to ask "Why?"
The answer is simple enough.
It's too embarrassing.
It's easier to raise the battle cry of "Black Lives Matter" when the police or whitey are involved.
It's different when the violence occurs within their own community.
Then it causes hardly a ripple beyond the families of the perpetrators and the victims.
Those incidents get little media coverage because they occur regularly.
They don't result in riots and looting.
Nobody shouts "Black Lives Matter" then.
The incidents in Baltimore are not a joke.
They revealed serious flaws within police departments across this nation.
They also revealed serious flaws within the leaders of the black community's responses to such provocation.
All it has done is harden opinion on both sides.
For the black community, that racism will prevent fair treatment of blacks by whitey and the police.
For whitey and the police, that blacks are prone to violence, making their neighborhoods dangerous and not good places for outside investment.
Go ahead and try to find a realistic way to compromise.